


Taking Flight

by ChokolatteJedi



Series: Flight [1]
Category: Douglas Adams - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series
Genre: Other, Post-Canon, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:59:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to my beta, Red!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Taking Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wallwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta, Red!

After seeing the final words of God to his creation, Arthur, Fenchurch, and Ford decided to leave the planet. They dragged Marvin onto the scooter and got him all the way to the door of their commandeered ship, but then he had refused to go any further.

"No, no, no. I've got enough dust in my circuits that I shouldn't last too much longer," He wheezed. "And if I did get onto your ship, I would just get rust flakes and dirt on your shiningly clean floor." As if to prove his point, he coughed again, causing a small cloud of rust flakes and dirt to rain onto Arthur's shoes.

"I really wouldn't mind if you flaked rust and dirt onto the floor of the ship," Ford said helpfully, "as it isn't actually our ship."

Marvin didn't seem to have heard him. "And then, of course, I'll be the one who has to clean it all up. After all, I wouldn't want to be an inconvenience to you all."

"That's the spirit!" Ford declared.

"So you're telling me that he's always like that?" Fenchurch whispered to Arthur, gazing at the robot in a mixture of horror, disgust, and compassion.

"Pretty much" Arthur nodded wisely. "He has gotten a bit worse about actually doing things while he complains about his life, but that could be because he can't really walk on his own."

"I wonder if he could fly?" Fenchurch pondered, loudly enough for Ford to hear. "Then he wouldn't have to drag himself everywhere."

Arthur exchanged a glance with Ford, a glance that spoke great multitudes of words in its own silent way before leaving them to go talk to one of the green-winged men who collected the scooters at this end of the trek. "It really couldn't hurt to try..." Arthur supposed out loud.

"No, it surely couldn't." Ford agreed. Then, together, they lifted Marvin up and chucked him off the end of the ship's ramp.

The robot flew threw the air much in the way that the green-winged angels didn't, and he actually fell silent for a moment, in what Arthur assumed was surprise. The moment didn't last long, and then Marvin was complaining in his wheezy, rusty voice. "Of course, invite me onboard and then throw me back off. I should have expected that from your kind of creature, but then I wouldn't have this fine opportunity to feel disappointed in you after I was proven wrong, so that's something, I suppose."

For a moment, Arthur thought that Fenchurch's idea had worked, as Marvin was actually floating a good foot above the ground with no sign yet of falling, but then the robot hit the hard ground with a loud thunk.

"And of course," Marvin wheezed and coughed, "you couldn't just tell me that you didn't want me to join you, nooooo. You had to throw me off the ramp, and now wouldn't you know that all the diodes on my right side are hurting now, not that you'd care."

Arthur and Ford exchanged another silent look, and this one lingered between them for a much longer span of time before floating off to join the other look. "Fine," Ford grumbled under his breath. "Marvin! Shut up and listen to me for a minute!" he shouted.

Fenchurch looked at Arthur in shock, but he squeezed her hand reassuringly. "That's just the way you have to talk to Marvin," he explained.

"Oh." Fenchurch nodded, with the air of someone who was nodding just to have something to do, rather than out of any sense of understanding or approval.

"Marvin! Why can't you fly?" Ford asked, as soon as Marvin's grumbled died down slightly in volume. "It looked like you were going to make it and then wham!" he illustrated his point by slamming his fist onto his other palm, making a smacking sound that seemed to offend Marvin.

Of course, since the very act of existing seemed to offend Marvin, Ford and Arthur ignored the robot's expression. "And of course, to add insult to injury, you have to mention something that robots like me just can't do," Marvin huffed, which forced him into another rusty coughing fit. "Circuits as advanced as mine cannot help but notice everything, including the act of flying, rendering the act null. Not that I haven't tried, of course," Marvin groaned. "And not that some newer models don't have a special subroutine that allows them to bypass that particular flaw, but not me, of course. And not that I wouldn't like to fly around like you lot, instead of dragging my broken parts all over the desert..."

Arthur and Ford tuned the robot out and headed up the ramp into their commandeered ship, Arthur gently escorting Fenchurch along with him. The last words Arthur heard as Ford closed the door were in another language that his Bable fish was apparently incapable of translating. Or unwilling to translate, at least. From the blush spreading across Ford's face, Arthur was actually quite happy for that small mercy.

o)o(o

"Aiiiiieeee!!!"

Ford snorted into his drink when Arthur screamed, and Fenchurch wrapped her arm around him comfortingly. In Arthur's defense, a quite terrifying looking Jack Nicholson had just taken an axe to the hotel room door in the movie they were watching. Also in Arthur's defense, Fenchurch was quite willing to comfort him when one of the movies startled him, which might have made him a bit more jumpy than he truly needed to be.

Arthur gripped his soda bottle tightly in his hands, trying not to spill any of the sticky drink on himself, and he felt Fenchurch tightening her grip around him. Unfortunately, when the image switched to Jack frozen in the snow, he jumped so badly that he did spill on himself, and on Fenchurch as well.

Arthur fumbled to apologize, all while spilling even more of the soda on them both, and trying to glare at Ford, who was laughing hysterically. Finally, Arthur gave up and simply lobbed his soda bottle at Ford, catching him in the gut. The action had two quite satisfying results - the first being that Ford became too winded to mock him, and the second being that now all three of them were covered in the sticky drink.

Smiling that smile that made Arthur's knees go all wibbly, Fenchurch slowly pulled off her blouse that now had soda coating it, and Arthur dimly registered that Ford was doing the same.

"Come on," Fenchurch suggested, "let's see how long it takes for Ford to realize which bit of my body has something wrong with it."

Arthur opened his mouth to comment, but he found that he didn't actually have anything to say to that, so he simply nodded dumbly. Arthur was quite good at that.

Arthur was also, as it turned out, quite good at squirming in confusion, and fortunately the bunks on their commandeered ship had been well stocked from the swamps of Sqornshellous Beta with mattresses that liked confused squirming and pillows that liked noncommittal wiggling, and so all of the residents of the ship enjoyed a quite lovely evening.


End file.
